Disaster strikes!

Our lodgings were considerably colder at 3500m but both Don and I had taken the precaution of wearing an extra layer inside our sleeping bags. Combined with the knackering climb and a degree of acclimatization, we both slept extremely soundly. Michael – ever the first to feel the cold – was, unfortunately, only wearing a t-shirt and spent the best part of the night awake and feeling the chill. Still, we all surfaced for breakfast at 6.30 and got underway by 7.15.
I had chosen to wear only shorts and t-shirt to start, trusting breakfast and the weight of my pack to bring me up to running temperature in the cold morning air. Of course, I had to blast down the early trail until I hit the sunlight burgeoning from behind Thorung La but, gratifyingly, just as I began to feel comfortable and the right side of warm, I witnessed my companions having to strip off several layers to stay cool. This return trek down the hill was tough on the legs and, having seen our surroundings well during a slow ascent, there was less to excite us. The scenery was still breathtaking and unique but we were robbed of the pleasure of surprise and it didn’t take long for our attentions to focus on the trembling in our knees and the aching of our thighs. Don seemed to be struggling more than I’d expected, despite taking a precautionary Diamox with his breakfast. I just assumed it was the tale of a lot of weight going through rugby-ravaged knees and didn’t foresee that it might be something more sinister but, as we wended our way down the edge of the broad river valley, he seemed to lag further and further behind. I really wanted to push myself whilst still at altitude (in preparation for the Everest Base Camp trek) so I often forged ahead to try and shorten the gap between breakfast and lunch but my rhythm was constantly being broken by the urge to fall back and shoot the breeze with my brother and to try to bolster his ailing spirits.
We stopped finally in Jomsom for lunch and it was here that Don let us in on a grim secret. His guts had been troubling him all morning and it seemed he was in the grip of a particularly nasty bout of diarrhoea. Firstly, we made the decision to overnight in Jomsom instead of pushing on to Marpha as intended. This would give Don 18 hours to assess his situation before deciding on a course of action. Secondly, I ran back up the road to the pharmacy I’d spotted on the way through, in order to purchase a pack of the magic Metronidazole that had straightened out my bout of the squits. Returning with the goods, I left him in an en-suite stocked with juice, dioralyte (kindly donated by Michael) and water, hoping that the anti-biotics would work quickly, allowing him to resume with us the following day. We were on a particularly tight schedule getting back to Pokhara as our return flight was on the 12th…and we couldn’t afford to miss it on account of Don’s return flight to Blighty, two days later. Add to this the complications caused by the Maoist strike (adding a day to our walk, due to a lack of buses and taxis) and we really had no time to be waiting around for illnesses to clear up.
Michael and I shared a separate room (leaving Don and his bowels in privacy) and both fell asleep reading during the afternoon. Dinner was another hearty affair consisting of four courses and lashings of hot lemon. We played cards with Suriya and met a group of other trekkers who were fun to chat to but by 9.30 I was pooped and headed off to get my head down after ensuring that Don had his second dose of medicine.